June 22, 2016

Our Northern California Homes

During our trip to the San Francisco / Napa / East Bay California area, we made a deliberate stop to see where we used to live when I worked for AT&T. The beautiful Pleasanton, California- a place we lived in the late 80s. I never wanted to leave, but God has other plans.

Back then, the owner of this house offered to sell it to us for $260,000. Of course, being a young family of five, we just didn't have the cash and had to pass. When we looked in Zillow during this trip, we saw the new estimated value was now almost $1 Million dollars.

We ended up eventually moving to San Ramon and rented this little home. Less than 1000 square feet for $1200 a month. When we moved in 1989, a house down the street like this one sold in one day for a mere $190,000. This house had been left to fall apart, but its new Zillow value was almost $800 Thousand.

Oh, property values in California! Beautiful but not affordable for the common folk. And so we moved to Denver via 4 months in Portland, Oregon when AT&T again restructured, and we had to move on.